Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed with how huge even the Standard version of Vector is these days, so I've been looking for a new home.

One that I've been keeping my eye on is TinyMe, which is a stripped-down 200MB version of PCLinuxOS. Their front page is down at the moment, you can download it from their wiki at http://tinyme.wikidot.com/download

this is a message i sent to VEC... tell me what you think... it's a little long... but i think it has a point....

oh and he hasnt gotten back to me on it

yea... guess i have been a stranger...

haha.. well... yea... im about done out here... but still have some time left... glad i didnt ahve to stay the 15 months most guys have to do...

well... i have been looking for a distro of late... cant D/L anything large... but something small i can... say smaller then 200 megs... had to laugh on distro watch says you like to keep things small and simple... but your smallest ISO is like 600 megs... what ever happen to that... i remember that when i started with VL it had two different types the large one and small one...

really wish you would of continued that... i like having to add what software that i need...

not sure how long it would take... but is it possible to make a smaller distro to put out... maybe something just for me... i know that would be asking alot... i hope it would be as simple as deleting a few files and ISOing it and your done... but dont go out of your way...

are you still using that texted based util that would setup your system?

in the mean time i have tried ubutuo backtrack damnsmall and lindows... have yet to find one that works...

you know the thing that turns me away from different systems is that they take longer then a day to get working after install... that's about how long i can wait to get something working till i reghost my machine with Wincrap...

and that's what turned me away from VL a while ago... it was a struggle to get working... and drivers and dependancies were not there...

if you were to ask me what im looking for in a distro would be...

a small and simple distro with easy install to HD and up to date Libs... current codecs, Open Office, Media player, and Firefox... and a windows envirment that's slick... not old... like maybe enlightenment but maybe ghome and or KDE... and the ability to install new software with little struggle... im ok with compiling software but not with missing drivers or Dependicies...

that's what i would like...

now... if after i get home i would like to help in some way... like maybe manage a smaller subdistro... that would meet those goals... to keep the bulk of a 700 iso to a min.

now as for as my knowlege of linux goes... well... im still a nub... i have worked with scripting before... and i can read and understand code well... but i have not coded with linux much... i know how to get around.. but say... if you had a read-only FS mounted at /dev/sda1... i wouldnt know how to make it so i could write to that Partition... like in the backtrack distro there is a command that i used that got around it without mounting it else where... it's little things like that that i would need to learn... but i think it's time that i do learn those tricks... oh and i have compiled a kernal before... but it failed badly... it worked... but i loaded options that i didnt need thus mad a large waste of space in the kernal...

if you have the time i would like to work with you on a distro...

what i was thinking is that i could take what you have for a standard distro and strip it down to what i would need... and for a time run it like that... and maybe add some things to it later on...

What do you think of all that? it's alot i know... but it's something that i have been looking for for years... and that's what drew me to VL along time ago... and you no longer offer... i would like to fill that void...

oh... and please get back with me on if you would be so kind to make a smaller ISO that i could D/L to use out here in iraq... thanks...

and the laptop im using is a Dell 1705.. with the ATI graphics card... with the different distros i have tried... i was able to get everything working cept maybe the media controls on the front... but 3d graphics accelation worked! so... there is no reason i cant get it to work with VL...

a small and simple distro with easy install to HD and up to date Libs... current codecs, Open Office, Media player, and Firefox... and a windows envirment that's slick... not old... like maybe enlightenment but maybe ghome and or KDE... and the ability to install new software with little struggle... im ok with compiling software but not with missing drivers or Dependicies...

I don't believe you can have KDE or Gnome with ISO size below 100MB....right?

and that's what turned me away from VL a while ago... it was a struggle to get working... and drivers and dependancies were not there...

A lot has changed since then.

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a small and simple distro with easy install to HD and up to date Libs... current codecs, Open Office, Media player, and Firefox... and a windows envirment that's slick... not old... like maybe enlightenment but maybe ghome and or KDE... and the ability to install new software with little struggle... im ok with compiling software but not with missing drivers or Dependicies...

that's what i would like...

I thought you wanted small? The gnome packages together are something like 900 MB (installed IIRC) , openoffice is over 300 MB (82 MB as a package), and if you want all of kde you'll probably loose another couple of hundred MB's.

Looks to me like you want 2 things that are fundamentally conflicting. You can't have a minimal system, and have all the dependencies you'd ever need.

a small and simple distro with easy install to HD and up to date Libs... current codecs, Open Office, Media player, and Firefox... and a windows envirment that's slick... not old... like maybe enlightenment but maybe ghome and or KDE... and the ability to install new software with little struggle... im ok with compiling software but not with missing drivers or Dependicies...

I don't believe you can have KDE or Gnome with ISO size below 100MB....right?

Well thanks to LZMA compression the total of GNOME core packages is probably in the 60 MB range. Add to that all the extras that actually make it useful, then yes, probably in the 100MB range (just for the packages of course, not decompressed size).

Basically, we now have people tugging at both ends of the rope. Some want VL to become a 64bit, have even more extras like HAL and i18n packages installed by default....others want it to be slimmed down a lot more...and others (this is already the third end of the rope ) want it to have all the extras and be slim at the same time.

Honestly, though, I'd like to see what can be done with around 200MB or so.

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Basically, we now have people tugging at both ends of the rope. Some want VL to become a 64bit, have even more extras like HAL and i18n packages installed by default....others want it to be slimmed down a lot more...and others (this is already the third end of the rope Cheesy) want it to have all the extras and be slim at the same time.

Once upon a time, that was supposed to be the point of having Standard and Soho. But today Standard is almost as huge as Soho; it's more about just Xfce vs KDE than small & light vs full-featured.

He wants KDE, an office suite, browser, and media player. NimbleX is KDE-based. It already includes Xine and XMMS, so there's the media player portion. Firefox is less than 10MB, and you could toss in Siag Office and still keep the whole thing to about 115MB.

He wants an office suite, browser, and media player. NimbleX already includes Xine and XMMS, so there's the media player portion. Firefox is less than 10MB, and you could toss in Siag Office and still keep the whole thing to about 115MB.

-Arch way:Download a basic iso with NIC cards drivers and linux kernel, and then download each package you need with pacman. From my point of view this is only for experts, because many people (more ppl every day in desktop environments) are scared of terminals.

Problems: Nothing can be automated. If you don't have X, there's no point in installing codecs with the iso. So you'll have to install them manually when you need it.

Now imagine someone does not install VASM. There's no problem in not installing it, but I think vl is meant to be a collection of things as a group, not just as many inconex parts.

-Trimmed down VL version: If packaging another iso without kernel headers, and less options from extra (opera,mplayer,putty....) is a matter of deleting the files and repackaging the iso, maybe it's a cool thing to have (and developing time is really small)